Archbishop Sheen’s Family Sues to Move His Body, From New York to Illinois

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, known by millions as the Emmy Award-winning host of a television show in the 1950s, made one of his last public appearances at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, rising from his chair and kneeling before Pope John Paul II during a visit in 1979.

But his burial in a crypt at the cathedral after his death a few months later at age 84 has been at the center of a dispute that has held up his 14-year journey toward sainthood. Relatives want his body moved to Peoria, Ill., where he was ordained a priest and where officials of the Roman Catholic Church have been behind the effort to make him a saint.

Now, his family has turned to the courts to compel St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Archdiocese of New York to turn over Archbishop Sheen’s body.

A petition filed on Monday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan by the archbishop’s niece seeks permission to disinter, remove and transfer his remains “because consent cannot be obtained” from the archdiocese.

The niece, Joan Sheen Cunningham, seeks to inter his body at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria, the church that Archbishop Sheen attended in his youth and where he became a priest in 1919. The family believes that Archbishop Sheen’s beatification — the step before canonization — is “imminent.”

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of the Diocese of Peoria, who initiated the canonization process for the archbishop in 2002 but announced that it had been postponed after officials in New York would not relinquish the body, said in an affidavit included with the lawsuit that he supported Ms. Cunningham’s effort.

Ms. Cunningham believes her uncle would have wanted to be interred at the church in Peoria if he had known he would be declared a saint, according to court documents.

Still, church officials in New York have resisted efforts to transfer the body of the archbishop, who is considered a hero of Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan. Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, where Cardinal Dolan is the archbishop, said it had been the “personal wish of Archbishop Sheen to be permanently buried beneath the high altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”

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Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen offering prayers at a Mass in 1979, the year that he died.CreditFred R. Conrad/The New York Times

The archdiocese recently offered a compromise to which it said Ms. Cunningham had agreed: It would send Archbishop Sheen’s remains to Peoria for his beatification if they would then be returned at an “appropriate time,” to the crypt at St. Patrick’s, according to Mr. Zwilling.

But a statement distributed by Alan S. Zigman, a lawyer of Ms. Cunningham’s, said the archbishop had never wished to be permanently buried in New York. Mr. Zigman said Ms. Cunningham had not agreed to the compromise.

While Mr. Zwilling said the archdiocese would need time to review the court petition, he said in a statement that it was “definitely encouraging that the Diocese of Peoria seems ready to reopen the cause so that the much-desired process toward beatification and canonization can resume.”

At the time of his death, Archbishop Sheen was among the most famous Catholic figures in the United States, known for his evangelism on radio, in newspapers, and on television. As the host of “Life Is Worth Living,” the show that ran in the 1950s, he reached tens of millions of viewers each week, taking positions against racism, nuclear proliferation and Communism.

After his death, the archdiocese asked Ms. Cunningham’s permission to bury the archbishop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, to which she agreed, according to her court petition.

But the lawsuit argues that the archdiocese had “no interest in pursuing” the lengthy and involved effort to canonize the archbishop. The lawsuit includes a letter from Cardinal Dolan’s predecessor, Cardinal Edward M. Egan, to Bishop Jenky in 2002 in which he called Peoria the “ideal” diocese to initiate the canonization process.

With the process well underway by 2009, Cardinal Dolan responded to questions about the archbishop’s body by pointing out that “Bishop Sheen only spent a few years in Peoria.”

A year later, Bishop Jenky suspended the campaign for sainthood, citing the issue with the body, but he later picked up the cause again. In 2014, he announced that it was postponed once more.

Matthew Sutton, an associate professor of theology at St. John’s University in Queens, said the battle harked back to the Middle Ages. At the time, the internment of a saint could secure a stream of pilgrims — and a prosperous future — for a small town, Dr. Sutton said. He pointed to St. Catherine of Siena, whose body was split after a dispute between Rome and Siena; her head was sent to Siena, where it remains.

“It seems like from a different time, many centuries ago,” he said.

Correction:

An article on Friday about efforts by the family of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen to move his body to Illinois as part of the drive toward his canonization misstated the academic rank of Matthew Sutton, who spoke about the importance of where saints’ remains are kept. He is an associate professor of theology at St. John’s University, not an assistant professor.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: An Archbishop’s Niece Sues to Move His Remains From New York to Illinois. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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